Priorities USA hits Romney in ad

Priorities USA Action, one of the two Democratic groups founded to counter deep-pocketed GOP groups in 2012, is targeting Mitt Romney in its first ad of the 2012 cycle.

Priorities USA Action unveiled the television ad Friday to coincide with Romney’s visit to South Carolina over the weekend.

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“Mitt Romney says he’s ‘on the same page’ as Paul Ryan,” says a voiceover, hitting the former Massachusetts governor on his past statements about health care policy. “With Mitt Romney, you have to wonder: Which page is he on today?”

In an April statement, Romney said he was “on the same page” as Ryan. In his health care speech in Michigan last week, Romney said he’d put forward his own Medicare plan that “ will not be identical” but “shares objectives” with Ryan’s.

Romney’s camp quickly fired back. Spokeswoman Andrea Saul told POLITICO’s Playbook, “President Obama’s first campaign ad is an attack ad. President Obama and his team are desperate to change the subject to anything other than jobs and the millions of Americans out of work. With 9.6 percent unemployment in South Carolina, voters are looking for a jobs plan, not a smear campaign.”

But Romney isn’t the Democratic group’s only target.

The ad also jabs former House Speaker Newt Gingrich for hi’s critique of the House GOP budget plan, proposed by Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) and his comparison of the Medicare voucher plan with “right-wing social engineering” on NBC’s “Meet the Press” last Sunday.

The ad then draws from South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley’s rebuke of Gingrich earlier this week on CNN, in which she called the Ryan plan “courageous.”

“Gov. Haley thinks the plan is courageous, and Gingrich shouldn’t be cutting conservatives off at the knees,” the commercial said.

Speaking Friday morning on MSNBC, Priorities USA Action co-founder Bill Burton said that the group will soon focus on other candidates as well.

“We’ll talk about more candidates than just Mitt Romney, but what’s more important than Mitt Romney here is the issue of Medicare,” Burton said. “What we saw over the course of this week is that the plan to essentially end Medicare as we know it is a litmus test for Republicans in the primary. Either you’re for it or you’re against it.”